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Ecosystem Services

Aichi Biodiversity Target Fourteen – Ecosystem Services – focuses on restoring and safeguarding critical ecosystem services. It states: By 2020, ecosystems that provide essential services, including services related to water, and contribute to health, livelihoods and well-being, are restored and safeguarded, taking into account the needs of women, indigenous and local communities, and the poor and vulnerable.

Ecosystems provide a wide range of goods and services that are essential to humans. These include food, fiber, medicines, fresh water, crop pollination, pollution control, sustainable livelihoods and natural disaster prevention, among many others. Ecosystem services are particularly important for vulnerable sectors of society, who depend disproportionately on them for their wellbeing. However, many ecosystems around the world have become degraded, and are in urgent need of threat mitigation, protection and/or restoration. In order to achieve Target 14, countries will need to identify the distribution and condition of critical ecosystems and assess the current levels of threat and protection of these ecosystems. They will also need to develop and implement key actions, including reducing key threats, increasing protection, changing management practices, and restoring degraded ecosystems.